Combat distance

[Solaris_Wave]

6 hours ago, Hendrix said:

Yeah I am totally with you. It falls into that category of: I really want to like the game but there is just so many things to struggle against. Especially in the later stages of the game.

You mentioned the later stages. Is that from a difficulty perspective or is it more down to something the game is missing, for instance?

[Solaris_Wave]

I recently checked out another review of Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge. This time it was IGN's review. They also talked about the difficulty of the game, namely the superior enemy numbers who can outshoot you and even throw their grenades farther than you can shoot! I know GODSPEED and Hendrix said the grenades were bad but it sounds like you are facing a load of professional baseball and cricket players with their pitching skills!

Not only that, but they can seemingly sprint back and forth at Olympic speeds, never tiring out (which I suspected, not having played the game myself), while your own mercs get tired quickly and apparently get out of breath firing their guns, causing them to collapse from exhaustion.

In fact, forget the professional baseball and cricket players, it seems like your enemies are either Terminators or Replicants.

[LoboNocturno]

11 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

I recently checked out another review of Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge. This time it was IGN's review. They also talked about the difficulty of the game, namely the superior enemy numbers who can outshoot you and even throw their grenades farther than you can shoot! I know GODSPEED and Hendrix said the grenades were bad but it sounds like you are facing a load of professional baseball and cricket players with their pitching skills!

Not only that, but they can seemingly sprint back and forth at Olympic speeds, never tiring out (which I suspected, not having played the game myself), while your own mercs get tired quickly and apparently get out of breath firing their guns, causing them to collapse from exhaustion.

In fact, forget the professional baseball and cricket players, it seems like your enemies are either Terminators or Replicants.

Hahah could be true, thats why i play only Jagged Alliance as turn based game and played XCom 1 & 2 as well of boredom which is pretty much the most popular turn based game of modern gaming but didnt like it that much, i like to a turn based game with realistic weapons and fight against human enemies. The aliens in XCom are looking way too childish imo, if there were cooler type of aliens like the Predator or so i may like it more. Also checked some reviews and gameplay of Silent Storm as some mentioned it was a good game but i dont know i also didnt liked it, you are in WW2 (like in Commandos, never liked Commandos either). Jagged Alliance is by far the best turn based game period imo.

[Hendrix]

10 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

In fact, forget the professional baseball and cricket players, it seems like your enemies are either Terminators or Replicants.

For me this is just a very lazy and cheap way to make a game challenging. Most of the time it just feels like the AI is cheating. Ofcourse I understand that making a good AI is very hard and that you as a developer need to give it some advantages. But when it "cheats" right in your face by for example throw a grenade right by your feet from a 100 meters, how is that fun? The "cheating" just takes away any type of tactics you try to deploy. Sure no plan survives first contact but in the end you can not even depend on "normal tactics" and instead you cheese and save-scum your way through the game. Me, being the stubborn bastard that I am, I become frustrated at not being able to play a tactical game in a tactical way.

  

16 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

You mentioned the later stages. Is that from a difficulty perspective or is it more down to something the game is missing, for instance?

E5 and 7.62 is RTwP + you can play it in slow-motion for better micromanagement. Everything the mercs do in the game takes a certain amount of seconds to complete. Also the game has a pure line of sight system, you see what your mercs see and hear (indicates with a ? mark hanging in the air). Overall this works fine for about (if I remember correctly) half of the game, but then it just gets bogged down in constant micromanagement due to the amount of enemies you confront. Line of sight to enemies are changing or lost every half second, because they run past trees/foliage etc. interrupting or cancelling the mercs aim. Instead of depending on your mercs line of sight to hit enemies you can use free aim but that only really works when the enemies are stationary or moving straight at you.

You need to spread your mercs out a bit to to cover areas and blind spots but then it gets harder to keep an eye on what each merc is doing or what is happening right were they are. For me, I quickly loose the sense of control of my mercs because of all this.

The AI deploys a bit of a suicide tactic were one or a few of them will run straight at your mercs and then instant throw a grenade (they take no time to put their weapon away or preap the grenade, it is just instantly flying through the air at your position). Wich ofcourse forces you to often shift location of your mercs. They also have a habit of doing this when they turn a corner you have set a merc to cover, forcing you to relocate. All this makes it very hard to create "kill zones" of wich you control.

Again since the game is a pure "line of sight" game, real and good cover is hard to find and even harder to estimate, were as in real life one would hunker down behind a rock and just peak your head up and your gun to engage the enemy (like in JA2 when you kneel the merc behind a rock), here you will often have to expose the merc much more to be able to engage.

E5 and 7.62 has some really good foundations, @GODSPEED made some great examples of what the games does very good. Again one more year of development would have made a huge difference probably. For me though the games becomes a bit of a chore since you are constantly checking what yor mercs are doing instead of ordering your merc to do something and see the outcome of it. Sure it is a much more realistic game than JA ever was or any turn based game with movement grids and so on for that matter, but for me and the way I play, the actual combat gameplay is slower and much less satisfying than JA.

[Solaris_Wave]

Blatant AI cheating in games is something that needs to be removed in the majority of games. It is annoying when they don't play by the same rules that the player has to. I agree that AI is hard to program. It isn't so much that it is hard to program the intelligence but more that it is hard to program the 'stupidity'. Or at least, to mimic human flaws and limitations.

I remember playing the first Operation Flashpoint on the PC. I think it received boundless praise and the declaration that it was so realistic. If you died in the game, well hey…that's war and you probably slipped up anyway.

One of the many things that quickly killed that game for me was the following situation: I was playing a sniper. I had a rifle with a suppressor on it to help reduce the gunshot somewhat. I was wearing a ghillie suit. It was night time and it was a moonless night. I was crawling very carefully through woodland towards an enemy base that had lights facing inwards to illuminate the compound (meaning anyone within the base would have no natural night vision). Within that base was a ZSU-23-4 anti-aircraft tank, parked up and both the driver and a gunner were unbuttoned with their heads exposed. I stayed prone and remained deep within the woods and surrounded by bushes. I decided to shoot the gunner first. I got a clean headshot on the gunner but as soon as I did so, the driver buttoned up inside the tank. A second later the turret rotated precisely so the guns were facing me and with laser-like accuracy I was immediately killed.

All those factors that would have given me cover, concealment, the element of surprise, etc. simply didn't exist. Due to making the AI simply god-like in its detection, reaction and shooting skill, all plausibility and supposed realism went up in smoke the moment I decided to take that shot. There was no way I would have been located at all, let alone that quickly. The AI simply wasn't developed with any weaknesses in that scenario.

If you are trying to play a strategy game like Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge and the enemy can outshoot you, throw grenades farther than you can shoot (and always so they land next to you), never get tired and so on, then what is the point? It doesn't seem worth the challenge or the effort because your skills, tactics and knowledge are worthless in the face of an enemy that doesn't even accept the same rules and laws you do.

 

I'm not really a fan of real-time squad based games. I don't mean a good old RTS game but anything that requires a bit more micro-management with each unit you have under your control. I tend to find that, as you describe, it can be hard to keep track of what is going on for every single person you have to control. You end up grouping your soldiers together, inching them along until an enemy appears, kill them and move a little farther. Either that or you are just keeping your units in a defensive position and waiting for them to come to you (because the AI can comfortably move multiple units independently, without having to worry about any user interface or mouse control).

I remember SWAT 2 being awkward and unsatisfying to play as it was an isometric view, real-time game. X-COM: Apocalypse had both real-time and turn-based options but I only dabbled with the real-time function, preferring the precise control of turn-based more (and you could still get a kind of real-time effect in turn-based play when firing automatic weapons, as you could shoot by holding down the mouse button for as long as you had Action Points and ammo).

I think the best way is how Jagged Alliance 2, Fallout 1 and 2, and Silent Storm handled it. Everything is in real-time so you can move more rapidly through the area, until contact with an enemy has been made. It then switches to turn-based and stays that way until you eliminate the enemy that triggered combat or you disengage.

Another system that works and for a much larger strategy game, is the one for the Combat Mission series. You set waypoints and orders for all of your units, planning the whole lot in a turn-based phase. Your enemy is doing the same thing. You then watch the outcome of that turn in real-time, seeing your units move, attack the enemy, watch the artillery land and vehicles take damage.

[Hendrix]

On 11/18/2022 at 2:59 AM, Solaris_Wave said:

I remember playing the first Operation Flashpoint on the PC.

Yupp, those games had a hell of a strange AI, I created a bunch of scenarios for myself in that game and it was hard to get the AI setting right. Most often they were either completely oblivious or laser accurate.

One other problem with in real time games is that often the units themselves becomes anonymous. There is just so much going on that you have a hard time keeping track of who does what and who says what. In E5 or 7.62 I do not keep a track of who said what, who missed every shot in the battle, who landed 3 headshots etc.

In JA I do keep a track sincce the actions and outcomes of my decisions are so distinctively presentet to me. Each merc has their own moment.

[Solaris_Wave]

Operation Flashpoint gave me a few other 'memorable' moments that made it feel like a clunky arcade game, despite having a great idea (open FPS games where you played a standard rifleman didn't exist back then). Enemy tanks behaved more like a giant bad guy than a vehicle with men inside it. They seemed to have all-around visibility and my attempt to creep behind one that was slowly moving along was met with the turret spinning round to attack me. It then managed to follow my every action. I ran for cover inside a nearby wood and then stayed prone, moving diagonally away from the tank. That turret moved around unrealistically looking for me and constantly used its 125mm gun to try to kill me, instead of any of its machine guns. It was impossible to shake off and never once gave the impression of a tank that gives its crew limited visibility.

Like you said, the AI seemed to alternate between stupidity where an enemy soldier would run past you, allowing you to shoot them in the back, or pixel-perfect shooters where they can be sprinting 400m in the distance, oblivious to your presence and then instantly kill you when they turn and fire one round from the hip. That one happened when I was lying prone on a hill and tried to hit this lone soldier and missed. He hardly stopped his sprint when he got me.

 

With RTS vs. TBS (Turn-Based Strategy) games, there have been a few occasions throughout the past where people or journalists will ask whether RTS has finally killed off TBS. Every time that question gets asked after the appearance of TBS games seems to wane, they always come back and prove that for certain things, a turn-based game will always give superior control. RTS games are more flashy, have lots of personality and are often more vibrant but it so often is hard to control everyone without accepting that battles can often feel like sending drones off to the meat grinder. It is almost as if, with RTS games, you have to detach yourself a little emotionally and reluctantly accept that your forces will take losses because you can't be everywhere and do everything at once. You have to accept that they are expendable.

Some of the RTS games can be somewhat exhausting to play when the units have special abilities or individual upgrades. I personally experienced that with Company Of Heroes 1 and WH40K: Dawn Of War 1. Which units did you upgrade with what? Did I give that squad the flame-thrower or was that the squad with the rifle-grenades, etc.?

Turn-based allows you more precise control in what each unit is doing and how that unit works in concert with the others. You can simply plan better and it is the best way to simulate lots of people on a battlefield, all thinking at the same time, communicating with others at the same time, as well as fighting and moving independently. Units in RTS games defend themselves but it really feels like you are the Queen ant controlling her colony.

[Hendrix]

I found this part (from the Gamescon article Wigen linked) particularly interesting on the topic of combat distance.

"The gamescom presentation also reassured us about weapon range. In the trailers and game scenes shown so far, these were extremely short, even opponents with rifles only ever shot at each other at a distance of a few metres. No comparison to Jagged 2, where a rifle bullet sometimes flies over an entire map. But there will be that in Jagged Alliance 3 too, the developers assure us, “a sniper on a turret can cover the whole map.”

There will again be portable light mortars and MGs, with the heavy versions placed in fixed positions for you to capture. Light bazookas are also part of the arsenal, as are mines and grenades (for throwing or firing via grenade launcher). However, mortar shells and bazookas are rare. Many weapons can be equipped with sights and scopes, bipods and silencers."

[Solaris_Wave]

It is nice to know that long distance engagements will feature in JA3. Larger battlefields open up the choice on tactics and how to engage the enemy. It will also mean that battle rifles, assault rifles, sniper rifles and machine guns will play a role that will separate them from shorter range weapons.

It also makes me wonder if there will be tense engagements where there might be an enemy sniper that is in a position to overlook the entire battlefield! Hopefully, there could be an individual enemy merc or a named elite soldier that could be a serious threat, as their reputation as a sniper is well known (and they might have a bounty on them if captured or killed).

I can picture a situation where your mercs have to make full use of cover, staying low when possible, sprinting from cover to cover to lower the chances of being shot (if sprinting gives a to-hit penalty). You might need a counter-sniper or to try suppressing their position with a machine gun or mortar as your other mercs close in, using smoke grenades until they can assault the sniper's location with an assault rifle, SMG, shotgun or handgun.

Not only that but the sniper might have soldiers defending him or her, plus mines and claymores covering the approaches.

[LoboNocturno]

4 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

It is nice to know that long distance engagements will feature in JA3. Larger battlefields open up the choice on tactics and how to engage the enemy. It will also mean that battle rifles, assault rifles, sniper rifles and machine guns will play a role that will separate them from shorter range weapons.

It also makes me wonder if there will be tense engagements where there might be an enemy sniper that is in a position to overlook the entire battlefield! Hopefully, there could be an individual enemy merc or a named elite soldier that could be a serious threat, as their reputation as a sniper is well known (and they might have a bounty on them if captured or killed).

I can picture a situation where your mercs have to make full use of cover, staying low when possible, sprinting from cover to cover to lower the chances of being shot (if sprinting gives a to-hit penalty). You might need a counter-sniper or to try suppressing their position with a machine gun or mortar as your other mercs close in, using smoke grenades until they can assault the sniper's location with an assault rifle, SMG, shotgun or handgun.

Not only that but the sniper might have soldiers defending him or her, plus mines and claymores covering the approaches.

Sounds very good to me, hopefully there will be some named mid boss battles in some sectors.

[Hendrix]

16 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

It also makes me wonder if there will be tense engagements where there might be an enemy sniper that is in a position to overlook the entire battlefield! Hopefully, there could be an individual enemy merc or a named elite soldier that could be a serious threat, as their reputation as a sniper is well known (and they might have a bounty on them if captured or killed).

This gave me a flashback to the first time I played the JA2 Demo and the dread I experienced from the rooftop sniper with a Dragunov. Neither Shadow or Ivan survived that encounter.

Awesome idea of having a few named "special elites"! Maybe just like Mike in JA2 these could carry some "unicorn" weapons/equipment.

[Solaris_Wave]

I remember Mike and his Heckler & Koch G11. That was a fun encounter. Nice rifle too, even it didn't really behave like the real thing would have done.

The idea of a named enemy merc or elite would be too good for the developers to pass up for JA3. I think a lone enemy sniper, who's reputation precedes them, would be a good choice and a cause for concern for the player. A 'celebrity' sniper fits better than a celebrity machine gunner or rifleman. It also worked for movies like Enemy At The Gates and Behind Enemy Lines. The latter movie in particular inspired the look of the main character in GTA IV.

I would like to see something where there are these named enemies who are a cut above the rest, such as the aforementioned sniper, maybe another one who likes to use close combat weapons (they could be stealthy characters or loud, brutal types who just like using machetes and striking fear into their enemy), and then as the campaign progresses, your main villain realises that they are up against well-trained mercs who are causing too many problems. He/she then decides to call in a team of elite mercs or PMCs to wipe your mercs out.

Just think about all of that together: enemy national militia, standard trained enemy soldiers, veteran enemy soldiers, individual named enemies (army or merc) and then a called-in hit squad of private military contractors to hunt your guys down. Then, you have local threats like bandit warlords or gangsters who control towns. Plus, aggressive animals to watch out for.

Keep those guns well maintained…you're gonna need 'em!

 

[Hendrix]

9 hours ago, Solaris_Wave said:

The idea of a named enemy merc or elite would be too good for the developers to pass up for JA3.

Agreed!

Another movie that comes to my mind is Sniper from 1993. Where Tom Berenger and Billy Zane are hunted by a mercenary sniper while trying to complete their mission.

Something like that could make a excellent encounter. Maybe in a nearby town or village you are informed that there is a merc sniper that operates in the nearby area. Later when exploring the surrounding sectors, the sniper might ambush your squad either by himself or toghether with a fireteam. Or maybe the sniper takes advantage of an encounter you have with some bandits. 

"Named enemies" does not necessarily have to be boss-like in combat. One could be a brilliant tactician and strategist, whom himself is not a hard enemy in combat. But his presence boosts the soldiers he commands, maybe even for several sectors in his vicinity.

Another one could be a ruthless local warlord/torturer. Causing fear in the locals and making it hard or even impossible for you to train militas to defend the nearby town.

The possibilities are quite vast and I think there's a lot of movies to get some character inspirations from. 😂

One problem could be if too many of them are implemented and their placement on the world map is more or less static. For the sake of replaying the game it might not be that exciting to know what you will encounter in the area. Knowing that you always will encounter the sniper at a specifc set of sectors is not that fun the 4th time around probably. Or knowing that before I bother with training a milita for this town or even liberating it, I should kill the torturer in sector xy first.

Maybe it could be atleast somewhat randomised? That way your campaign would be more unique for each playtrough.

[Hendrix]

It might also be cool (and frustrating) if an enemy such as the merc sniper would be careful when engaging your squad. Instead of standing his ground he might try to escape the sector to ambush you again another day.

[Solaris_Wave]

I definitely agree on the need for randomisation. The local warlord or gangster controlling the area, for instance, could be the same situation every time but be at some randomised village or town.

I also mentioned some time ago about having a well known enemy sniper disengaging before they are found and killed, maybe in another thread. If you get to kill them straight away, there isn't much of a build-up of how they are a major threat to you.